A Two Pipe Problem * is a one-man letterpress studio run by the artist Stephen Kenny.
Kenny considers his three antique printing presses to be artistic tools. Working with a mix of wooden fonts dating back to 1836 and more modern steel type, everything is designed and printed directly. Kenny incorporates the wear and imperfections of his ancient wooden letters and his presses into the aesthetic of his work.
Designing a print with individual letter blocks of movable type gives each work a completely individual identity. The density of the ink may differ slightly, meaning different areas of the type block register more or less clearly. Type may shift incrementally under the pressure of the press, realigning the spacing by infinitely small degrees. Design by movable type is part design – matching a line of text to a wood font – and part compromise – setting text to fit the space the printer has. Printing with old wooden blocks bearing nicks and scratches makes each block and each print entirely unique. This is all part of the charm of letterpress.
In the series of prints he is producing whilst resident in The Gallery at Foyles, Kenny will quote and re-set famous opening and closing lines from works of fiction stocked on the shelves of Foyles bookshop, using these lines as source material to produce a new body of letterpress prints that pay homage to the surrealist wordplay of ‘Exquisite Corpse’ or Cadavre exquis.
Similar in format to the Victorian parlour game ‘Consequences’, Cadavre exquis invites each collaborator to either draw an image or write a word or phrase in sequence on a piece of paper, then fold it so that the next player cannot see the previous contributions. The game was conceived in 1925 in Paris by the surrealists Yves Tanguy, Jacques Prévert, André Breton and Marcel Duchamp as they sought methods to disrupt the waking mind’s penchant for order by implementing elements of unpredictability, chance, and group collaboration into their work. The name ‘cadavre exquis’ was derived from a phrase that resulted when they first played the game, ‘le cadavre exquis boira le vin nouveau’ (‘the exquisite corpse will drink the new wine’).
Kenny’s series of prints will appear on the walls of the Gallery at Foyles throughout the residency, with the exhibition changing and growing on a daily basis.
*“I’m a big Sherlock Holmes fan, if ever he had a particularly tough case to solve, it would require 2 (or sometimes 3) pipes to solve. I don’t smoke a pipe though.” – Stephen Kenny.
Stephen Kenny will be in residence daily from 10:00am in the Foyles Gallery. Please feel free to talk to the artist as he works.
For more information about A Two Pipe Problem Letterpress, visit:
http://www.atwopipeproblem.com/
For more information about The Gallery at Foyles, visit: